This troubling new scheme gives privately funded environmental litigator/activists — who are unaccountable to the people — state police power, if the attorney general demonstrates environmental fealty to the special-interest group funding it.

If you're a manufacturer or lobbyist for electric vehicles, forget lottery fever; Gov. Cooper just flung the door wide open for government cronyism in your field. As they say in lottery ads: "You may already be a winner!"

The UN says we have 12 years to cut CO2 emissions drastically or face climate catastrophe. That means we'll have to stop eating meat, too. I suspect they're amping up the rhetoric because the U.S. is leading the world in cutting emissions, and we're doing it (a) without them and (b) through the free market.